A conversation with Devillish. A daily working routine of the uwow.biz Administrator

4-10-2015, 21:44

Hello, dear guests and players of the uwow.biz project. Many of us often see "blue nicknames" on the forum and, occasionally, it seems quite simple and easy to work as an Administrator. However, very few people understand what it really is. As an administrator, you have tons of work, high degree of responsibility for your and other person's actions. Moreover, you have to be able to dedicate a lot of time to it. Devillish, the administrator, has agreed to answer my questions today.

[Lowenzahn]: Hi, Letta. Thank you for finding some time to spare, answering a couple of questions.[Devillish]: Hello. Will you drink some tea or coffee? Or do you want some strong drinks?))

[L]: No, thank you, I'm at work) Please, tell us how you ended up being on this project? [D]: I used to play with my friends on a small server, then I quit playing WoW for some time, but when I returned to the game, my friends were already playing on uwow. It's them who invited me here.

[L]: The position of administrator is, for certain, not only a high degree of responsibility, but also a large amount of work. Please, tell us how it all started? How did you manage to become a part of uwow.biz staff?[D]: It was a long time ago, when the project was still just a baby. There was no enormous structure of administration, no approved positions or any other stuff, which we have now. So I was looking for a guild, as players often do, but I was trying to find the most talkative one and not the most powerful. That's the way I'm, I like to chat. And then I got lucky - I found not only a talkative guild, but it was also one of the best guilds at that time "I AM A GANGSTER GOD DAMN IT". This is the guild I settled in, and literally in a week Agis invited me in a skype call. I didn't even know that he was a part of Administration. Besides me, there were a lot of "rookies". We were asked to take the position of moderator. I said yes.

[L]: Since then a couple of years had passed (in order to be exact, five years) and you became an administrator. Did you want this position to be yours? Was it your goal? Or was it initially your passion from the start, treating your job responsibly and with enthusiasm and just doing your work? [D]: Initially, I didn't even think that the project can reach such level of quality, especially I didn't think of myself as an Administrator. Like I said, there was no such thing as administration structure. I spent 9 hours a day, reading LFG and muting people who deserved it. There was no promotion back then, but now we give Ethereal Credits to our moderators. But I liked my job anyway, it was something new to me, something interesting. So I had worked as a level 1 moderator for 10 months. It was only me from the group of "rookies" who stayed) Then the project started growing very fast. The administration structure began to build up, a new Curator title appeared, and I got my first x100 Lich King realm. But I'm always pushing forward, and at that time it was not an Administration thing, it was just me who wanted to do more for the project, putting a lot of significant effort in its development. Some people call me "The oldest curator" for fun. Years later, I became an Administrator.

[L]: What funny moments can you tell us? You have been working here for such a long period of time now. There are definetely some funny moments to remember. I'm sure it happened to you more than once.[D]: Perhaps, the funniest thing is tickets. Sometimes players write ridiculous things. We even had a special staff thread, where we used to post funny tickets. It's impossible to remember them all. Frequently, when you log into your character, someone whispers you about account trading or even introduces himself as an admin. I can't remember a specific moment, besides one, when a player was threatening the owner of the project. The player's name was Kovalenko Vyacheslav Mikhailovich, a head of the activity organization management for district militia officers and divisions for minors.

[L]: Besides everything, you are a curator of the high-populated realm. How do you manage to combine all the responsibilities and fulfill such amount of work?[D]: Sometimes I think that there is not enough time in a day. In fact, I have enough house cares, my husband is not a hamster, you can't put him in a cage) Actually, I don't know how to be able to do everything in time, there is always a lot of work. When I wake up, I wash up, make myself a cup of tea and begin to work. I won't leave my working place untill I've looked through all my skype messages from GMs. Then I do some stuff around the house and get back to work again. That's the most hellish time of my day. I need either to give out a donate item, or add some items to the donation NPC, or check some spells, or fix some forum stuff and so on. Perhaps, I can't list everything. It's not possible to do everything in one day, so usually I divide my work into two parts. I do one half today and the other tomorrow. It's an endless process, because I have infinite amount of work.

[L]: From time to time, the realm administration structure needs some changes. And for sure some of our readers want to try themselves as an administration staff member. Tell me, please, what qualities a potential moderator/helper should have?[D]: Every curator, perhaps, chooses to his taste. It's true, because a new member needs to grow in terms of experience or in terms of adapting to the unusual situations. You need to work with him every day, that's why everyone has his own taste when it comes to it. I love hard-working people and I don't like the "man-plant" kind of people. You should accept criticism adequately, because I don't want to mentally harm a child. You need to be level-headed, because players do not always say some nice things to us. But these are personal qualities, and as for working qualities, it's of course knowledge of the game and rules, how are going to work without knowing them?

[L]: Kate: When looking through the applications of candidates for the position of moderator/helper, what are you looking at first?[D]: I rely on my intuition and I pay attention to the spelling of the words. These two things are probably the most important for me.

[L]: Are there any personal qualities which are not acceptable to you? What kind of person you wouldn't like to talk to and to work with?[D]: Letta: I don't like "rucksack". I call people that way if they are not comfortable with something, but they don't talk about it. Instead, they grumble behind your back. But when you are talking to them, they would hint at it, for example, they would make a businesslike tone or insert some caustic phrase in sentence of agreement. I prefer people who are not afraid to speak their mind, even if it may not affect the final decision.

[L]: From time to time, the server hostes some scripted events made by developers of the project. What do you think, do the they have any future? Can these massive events make the server more attractive in players eyes?[D]: I think yes. Personally, I want all the events to be custom-made. Moreover, I want them to last a few days, not a half an hour. It's something similar to the standard blizzard events, but newer. The more events, the better.

[L]: If we are to talk about the event rewards, then what is your opinion, as a person who is responsible for donations on MoP, regarding prizes selection? [D]: I don't mind if players receive donation items as a reward. I'm against those kind of things which make valuable items worthless. For example, there are many arguments against Warglaive of Azzinoth which can be obtained from the event's quest. Just imagine that in half a year the whole realm will be running around with Warglaive transmogrification. Will they remain as worthy as today?

[L]: It's not a secret, however, many people don't know that we are actively working on the Draenor. In the near future, the realms will open. But what is happening on WoD right now? Perhaps, you can lift the veil of secrecy for our readers?[D]: We are working hard on WoD at the moment. Including me as well. The developers are working to fix global bugs. Me and a couple of people are fixing every class spell. In addition, we are working hard to fix every formula, every talent. We also have a crew which specializes in fixing quests and NPC. All things considered, we all have a lot of work and very little time to spare. We will open WoD server quite soon.

[L]: Thank you for answering the questions. I wish you best of luck in your work)

Dear readers, perhaps, this interview showed you something new about the work of our administration and even gave the answers to some of your questions that interested you.

Important message

A new Legion x100 server in Hong-Kong has been launched for the players from Asian region. Players from China and Taiwan are able to play on it comfortably, with minimal ping. Also the transfer function will be avaliable soon. It will be possible to transfer your characters from uwow.biz Legion x100 to the new Legion x100 server in Hong-Kong